Quake LIVE Update 03/15/2011 [ Comment ]Tuesday, 15 March, 2011 at 8:27 PST | | Print NewsThe latest QUAKE Live update is slated for today and will bring a couple new maps for Premium account holders, some game tweaks and even some Web goodies like Facebook uploading for screenshots. Here's the whole deal:

We currently plan on performing a site update Tuesday, March 15th. We may experience some lengthy downtime while performing the update as we deploy some new infrastructure.

We will make a full changelog available early next week, but until then, here is a broad overview of what will be included in this premium update:

Premium Maps Added:

Toxicity (Duel): Created by Alexander Mader, Toxicity is an enclosed Duel map with a distinctive look. Twisting halls and teleporters provide ample escape, as long as you watch out for the namesake pools of toxic acid in the main rooms of this arena. Own the world, or at least your opponent, and spread disorder by knocking them around with some rockets. Bounce them well, and you can treat yourself to a Red Armor, while they suffer some unfortunate burns.

Distant Screams (Large CTF): Formerly known as the perennial favorite Silent Night, we've torn down the Christmas decorations as to not look like that weird house down the street lit up well into March. Thankfully, it hasn't warmed up enough to melt the ice that covers vast swathes of the level, allowing massive acceleration throughout the frozen tundra terrain. Everything else is still mostly as you remember it, from the grenade traps to the secret button that dispenses health. Wait, that's supposed to be a secret...

Game Changes:

Kill Beep for Premium players: Enabling cg_killBeep will play a distinct sound when you score a kill in any mode.

Increased size of hit cylinders: Increased hittable region of players by 10% to more closely mimic the area of the old cuboid region.

Improved arena download system: Download size for Standard players reduced by about 50% by not downloading premium content until the player joins a server running the arena. This also means these maps will be unavailable in Practice mode for Standard users. Premium and Pro users will still download all content as they did before.

Increased damage of Shotgun in Team Deathmatch: Increased damage of Shotgun back to 100 to match the Shotgun in other modes after determining that the spread and damage change made in other gametypes was a sufficient adjustment.

Web Changes:

Facebook Screenshot uploading:Visit Social Settings under the Settings menu to link your Facebook account with QUAKE LIVE. After binding a key from Social Settings, or manually binding a key to /socialScreenshot, you will be able to take an upload a screenshot directly to Facebook.

Added tier display to player profiles: All players can now view what tiers they are in by clicking the Statistics tab on their profile.

Added Change Country Flag to Account Settings: All players can change what country appears on their profile and in the in-game Premium scoreboards.